Dcubed

Sooooo.... that Castlevania Mirror of Faith leak is interesting indeed. Actual proper support from a decent western developer (Mercury Steam) that is not called Wayforward, Renegade Kid, Shinen or 5th Cell!? HOLY SHIT! Maybe Iwata wasn't bluffing after all? If so, who else could we be realistically looking at supporting the 3DS this E3? Edit: e3.nintendo.com is live now and there's quite a little revelation on there! Katsuya Eguchi (head of EAD 2 and director of titles such as Animal Crossing & Starfox 64) is the Wii U hardware producer this time and not Hideki Konno! (the 3DS hardware producer, the head of EAD1 and director of the Mario Kart series) What is going on? Are they leading separate console and handheld hardware teams now?

Was just about to post this! (shakes fist) Another guy mentioned that it has 2D gameplay but uses celshaded 3D polygon graphics. LOS 2 has been rumoured for ages, but it looks like it turned out to be this game instead. Not sure if want... If IGA and the rest of the Japanese CV staff were involved, I'd feel a lot better about this. LOS wasn't bad, but I don't trust Mercury Steam to make a 2D CV on their own. The question also here is what kind of CV will it be? Actionvania or Metroidvania? (Or maybe something completely different!) Update! Looks like it's real! Konami tried to take the original site down, response is here - http://www.n1ntendo.nl/article/38054/1/All/wereldprimeur-artikel-offline-wegens-verzoek-konami They also say that there was a typo in the name; so it's probably called Mirror of Fate rather than Mirror of Faith. Also, apparently a few rumours were swirling around a few days ago about it being a Metroidvania without the levelling up and with Order of Ecclesia style level design (a mix of linear and Metroid style levels). We're supposedly due two CG trailers at E3. One for Mirror of Fate and another for Lords of Shadow 2 (console game) MoF takes place between LOS1 & 2 story wise.

Stereoscopic 3D (The 3D effect) It's less confusing to abbreviate it that way (so you don't get confused about 3D polygons and 3D effects! : peace: ) I hope they let you swap between the new effect and the old (like in SM3DL). The game looked great as it was and it would be sad to see it lost to time!

Yeah me too. I don't see why they feel the need to change it. It's one of the best S3D effects on the platform! It'll be interesting to see what changes... If it's changed for the worse, I could always just delete the update data and play the vanilla version I suppose.

Hmm, that would be an interesting turn of events. SEGA also seem like the kind of publisher that would do something like that. Plus there have been a ton of games that have been delayed from late 2012 to early 2013 recently; Bioshock Infinite, Aliens CM, South Park: The Game, Tomb Raider and seemingly Metal Gear Rising (going by a recently changed Amazon listing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metal-Gear-Rising-Revengeance-PS3/dp/B006T960GE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337591898&sr=8-1 ) Now there's only 6 big PS360 games left to come out in Q3-4 2012 (Asscreed 3, BLOPS 2, RE6, DOA5, DMC and Tekken Tag Tournament 2). I suppose that GTA 5 is still a possible 2012 release, but I'm not expecting that to hit the Wii U anyway. It's all quite suspicious...

This week's goodies... eShop: Art of Balance TOUCH!, Mighty Switch Force update (5 extra levels, enhanced S3D effect, quick retry option - all for free ) Wii VC: Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo) Good stuff. Didn't expect to see the MSF update so soon!

I always find these kinds of games to be far more impressive than the console games that push graphics. Seeing DKC on GBC was utterly mindblowing at the time (and still impresses me to this day), I wish they did a follow up article with GBA and DS games. There's some amazing stuff out there! GBA V-rally 3: Asterix GBA: Resident Evil 2 GBA: Driv3r GBA: Iridion 3D: Iridion 2: Super Monkey Ball Mini: Gunstar Future Heroes: Gekido Advance: Golden Sun/TLA: Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories (all dat FMV!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9IYGRkYplM&feature=related DS Cop The Recruit: Nanostray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8-ygTKBLYc&hd=1 Nanostray 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WisP3-lbjU Golden Sun Dark Dawn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VwT8qhVFLQ&feature=related Dementium The Ward (60FPS too!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDssPKkHtYU Dementium 2 (60FPS again!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pewrw6TBRD4 Viewtiful Joe Double Trouble (Not only does it look nearly as good as its GCN counterparts, it renders the game twice on both screens! And the split power is crazy!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4mEbj5a3eA&feature=related Metroid Prime Hunters (The whole game is impressive, but these boss rooms really stand out for me - Is that bump mapping!? In a DS game!?): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WyU0twxDReo#t=508s Phantom Hourglass & Spirit Tracks (I'm not gonna post a video, because the whole game is amazing really. Just stunning on how close they captured the look and feel of Wind Waker on a device that was vastly less powerful - and there's a lot of double screen rendering craziness with a number of bosses too, that just blew my mind!) Mario Kart DS: (Again I'm not posting a video simply because the whole game is impressive. It looks vastly better than Mario Kart 64 AND runs at double the framerate! - 60FPS!)

So I just finished it and... well... it's a game of ups and downs for sure. The integration of its inspiration is (mostly) well done; but as I said before, it isn't as good as the sum of its parts. I'm not gonna repeat what I said before, so here are the rest of my thoughts. There's FAAARRR too much recycling of rhythm games. Though there's 50 in total, if you discount the repeats, there's only really around 12-15. When you have to fight the Chevaliers Diabaloque for the 5th time, it starts to grate on you. Oh and some games are outright poorly designed (I'm looking at you R:33, that double dog game is utter bullshit and unplayable without the guide, by which point you're just matching patterns rather than playing to the rhythm!) Story wise, it has no idea what it's doing. It starts off somewhat believable, then by the end it goes into full on JRPG nonsense (complete with Floating Neon Space Cubes! - that's how you know you're coming to the end ) I mean, Layton is pretty ridiculous (and I do like general craziness) but this game's story just takes the piss completely Though it sounds like I'm really down on it, I did still really enjoy it. It could've used some extra polish, (especially any of Charlie's games, the timing and animation is completely wonky!) but still well worth playing.

Ooh... Shy/FlyGuy maybe!? Please! It feels weird having a Mario Tennis game without him!

Please please please listen to this man! That is glorious! And yes, GAF is my go to place for agregate news and gifs. Used to post there (as you might recognise from my PSN ID ) don't like it anymore though. Aside from sales age, it's GFaqs in disguise these days VVVVVV (This place is much better )

OOoooooorrrr, you could just go online and scan the QR code from your computer screen

I just hope they offer them up for purchase at some point. It would be a tragedy to have them lost to the ether forever

So it seems that Chance Shots aren't the be-all and end-all of matches then. Excellent! That's my only real fear dispelled then! Bring on next Friday!

My God! Rayman Origins 3DS is just gross! It literally looks and feels like you're playing a low quality YouTube video via Onlive and I've heard better sound quality from a gramophone! 30FPS is unacceptable. It's a bloody 2D game, the 3DS should have no trouble running this game in 60FPS, even in 3D. Ubisoft shitting out a low quality effort on a Nintendo handheld? What a surprise! (oh and it happens to be another shitty Rayman port to boot! It's practically tradition!)

Until of course you get to a Kirby game's final boss & Boss rush challenge. Then it always becomes crazy hard!

14:00 GMT I think.

To be honest, you really could just start with any Kirby game (even the spinoffs!). They're all very accessible and all great fun. If you want to start from the "beginning" of the series though, then I'd actually start with Kirby's Adventure rather than Kirby's Dreamland. Dreamland may have been the actual first game, but Adventure was the first to introduce the series staple of copy powers and was the one to set the series in motion so to speak (much like Super Mario Bros in comparison to Mario Bros). Other than that, go nuts! Just as a note, every single console Kirby game ever made (including the spinoffs) is now available on the VC/Wii Retail (with the sole exception of Kirby Air Ride for GCN, which can of course be played via backwards compatibility). The handheld games are also mostly covered by the 3DS' backwards compatibility and the VC, with a few exceptions - Kirby's Tilt N' Tumble, Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland, Kirby's Star Stacker (available on JPN VC, probably will hit ours soon), Kirby's Pinball Land (Rated by OFLC, will hit soon), Kirby & The Amazing Mirror (available to 3DS Ambassadors, will probably get a proper commercial release along with other GBA games within the next few years)

To be fair though, Snap is kind of screaming out for a 3DS or Wii U sequel. The use of the gyro for 360 degree photo snapping and the addition of every Pokemon (no more size limitations!) is far too obvious... Same goes for Pokemon TCG (AR enabled!)

Completely agree. The system already takes a screenshot of both screens, why not just let us save it?!

Lol! It's pretty hilarious that it ended up being exactly mid May in the end! The system update apparently just allows you to update without having to put in your parental control PIN (though it probably has some security fixes as well) Either way, nothing important (the only thing that matters is the MK7 update! )

Mind you though, I suppose that local play doesn't really need a patch. You can just whack the cheater on the head if they take the glitchcut. In-built solution!

Interesting. Seems the glitch still works in offline and local play. Only the online mode has been fixed (I have tested it to hilarious effect and yes it HAS been fixed! ) I guess they didn't want to mess up existing time-trial times...

But you can delete the update data from the System Settings screen if you want to play the vanilla version! Ahh well, at least it stops you from going online without the update and tells you to go download it from the eShop (tried it before I updated) The game should really re-direct you to the eShop MK7 update page though, rather than just throwing you back onto the title screen...

Looks like I spoke too soon! The Mario Kart 7 patch is out now on the eShop! Why it doesn't auto download, I have no idea!

Looks like I spoke too soon! The Mario Kart 7 patch is out now on the eShop! Why it doesn't auto download, I have no idea!